Secular humanist group wins a round as it seeks to perform marriages

A secular humanist organization that wants Indiana to give its leaders the legal right to pronounce people married has won a round in its legal fight.

The Center for Inquiry Indiana, part of an international organization, lost at the federal district court level in December 2012, but Monday learned a federal appeals court has disagreed with the judge.

Now the organization is waiting to hear whether Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller will appeal thatruling and keep the legal battle going.

In a written statement Monday, Zoeller said he is reviewing the options.

“My office has a duty to defend state laws the legislature passed from lawsuits that private plaintiffs file, and we contended the legislature’s requirements for determining who can solemnize a marriage for the purpose of filing a marriage license at the county clerk’s office were reasonable and included alternatives for couples without involving clergy,” Zoeller said in the statemetn. “We will review the 7th Circuit’s decision to determine the options to appeal on this narrow but important question of state legislative authority.”

In 2012, U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker said Indiana laws do not deny equal protection to the nonreligious. Monday, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago disagreed with Barker.

Reba Boyd Wooden, executive director of the Center for Inquiry Indiana, said the organization’s attorney, ACLU lawyer Ken Falk, told her Monday that if there is no appeal, it could still take several weeks before Center for Inquiry representatives could perform legal weddings. The Court of Appeals has to send down an order that has to be processed before it would take effect.

An appeal by Zoeller would prevent that from happening, pending a ruling on his appeal.

Still, Wooden was happy about Monday’s ruling — and said demand for her services keep building.

She said she regularly receives calls from couples who want to be legally married, but without religion and not at the County Clerk’s office.

“I get calls all the time,” Wooden said. Some couples — same-sex or opposite-sex — choose a big family or fancy ceremony officiated by her or another Center for Inquiry representative, and a separate civil ceremony at the clerk’s office. Others want just one service officiated by someone authorized to “solemnize” their marriage, Wooden said.

Last month, in the two and a half days that same-sex couples were allowed to marry legally, before that practice also was halted by an appeal of a lower court judge’s ruling, Wooden said she was inundated with requests — but had to turn the couples away.

The couples could be married, but only by someone authorized to sign their marriage certificates.

“We would have been over there helping (Marion County Clerk) Beth (White) out,” Wooden said.

She said the Center for Inquiry could get around Indiana law in a few ways — for one, it could call itself a “religion,” which it refuses to do.

A member who is an attorney has used the Indiana provision that allows lawyers to become “judge for a day,” allowing them to legally perform marriages. Other states also allow any citizen to become a “judge for a day,” and the Center for Inquiry sanctions that practice, too.

And there’s one route that would satisfy Indiana law, Wooden said, but is deemed hypocritical by the Center for Inquiry.

“What really makes this such a farce,” Wooden said, “Is that I could go online in five minutes and become a minister.”